Caribbean Island to Offer Rides Into Space

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Caribbean Island to Offer Rides Into Space

XCOR Aerospace is teaming up with the southern Caribbean island of Curacao to develop a space port for future suborbital tourist and scientific flights. The agreement is with the territorial government of Curacao and a group of Dutch investors with the hopes of offering flights in 2014.

The joint venture is known as Space Experience Curacao, or SXC. The group will lease one of XCOR's Lynx spacecraft. The Lynx is a small two-seat spacecraft (pictured above) designed to launch to more than 100 kilometers (about 328,000 feet).

The pilot and passenger would experience weightlessness at the apex of the flight. And from that altitude they will be surrounded by the darkness of space and see the curvature of the earth with the sandy beaches and turquoise waters of Curacao 62 miles below.

The cost of a single ride is expected to be $98,000.

Based in Mojave, California, XCOR is developing the Lynx and plans to begin test flights in 2011. Initial space flights will take place from the Mojave Air and Space Port before offering rides from other locations. The company also has an agreement to offer rides in South Korea beginning in 2013.

Mojave continues to be a hotbed of space-tourism development. The team down the flight line at Scaled Composites is busy with flight tests leading up to the first glide flight of SpaceShipTwo.

After a small landing-gear incident with the mother ship Eve back in August, the team is moving forward with flight testing. According to the company website, the latest flight of Eve yesterday included a dry run of the SpaceShipTwo release and several simulated SS2 approaches to the runway.

Virgin Galactic's founder, Sir Richard Branson, recently announced he expects the first tourist flights on SpaceShipTwo to take place within 18 months.